Cleaning up

I spent quite a bit of time today cleaning up the raised beds in the mountains today. This meant editing some tomatoes that were not producing very much, along with some squash plants.

I'll add some mushroom compost and organic fertilizer over the weekend, and sow more fall greens and lettuce!

Uh, having two vegetable gardens is way too tempting.  How can I resist replanting?

Read More

A pileated woodpecker

Behind my office is a Southern red oak in decline.  Limbs have been trimmed and the top has already broken, although we're not inclined to take it down just yet.

My colleague pointed out to me this morning that a pileated woodpecker was busily working a cavity high up on the trunk - what a great sight.  This is a blurry image from early morning (cropped, of course!).

It's probably a feeding cavity based on my bit of research, although I'm hardly an expert on bird behavior.  Not the time of the year for a nesting cavity, certainly, and pileated woodpeckers forage in dead and dying trees in search of a favorite prey item, carpenter ants, according to All About Birds, Cornell Ornithology Lab's online field guide site. 

Or perhaps it's foraging for some sort of other insect larvae, too.

Read More

Pizza peppers...

I love thick-walled and productive pizza peppers.  One source is Territorial Seed, where they describe them as hot, but I haven't found them to be hot at all.  They're juicy and delicious. Totally Tomatoes may offer the same variety, hard to know.

And they're certainly the most substantial peppers that I've ever grown (in terms of being as close to as thick-walled as greenhouse peppers).

'Pizza' peppers

Here's an image of a couple of peppers from the garden (one from the Piedmont, one from the mountains). The larger one is from a well-watered mountain container, the smaller was on its own.

I left the edge of the lime in the photo for a size perspective.  They're not big, but delicious and the plants are productive!

Read More

Looking forward to garden visiting

In just about a month, I'll be visiting gardens in Germany and the Netherlands for a couple of weeks on a self-guided garden study tour.

I've been wanting to do this for several years, after I started learning more about the 'new wave' gardening trends practiced by Dutch, German, and English garden designers, creating naturalistic gardens, and often using many of our North American natives.

It should be quite interesting.  I'll be visiting Piet and Anna Oudolf's private garden during their open days, as well as Mien Rhys' garden, now open to the public.  There are a number of other destinations on the itinerary, too, Hermannshof and Weihenstephan. The latter requires dealing with Oktoberfest visitors, so I may not make it there.  We'll see. But there are lots of other gardens, natural areas, and cultural sites to visit, too, so I'm totally looking forward to the traveling.

I spent a year in Germany as a post-doc almost three decades ago, so it will be interesting to return.  My gardening companion and I went to an International Botanical Congress in Berlin back in 1987, and spent 3 weeks traveling in Germany, Austria, and Northern Italy, but we haven't visited Germany since, choosing more far flung places to travel to (the exception have been trips to Northern Italy in 2001 and Southern Italy in 2008).

I'm currently immersing myself in reading and listening to German (it's amazing how much that I still comprehend), and enjoying reading gardening blogs in German, too!  It's great fun to be able to listen to podcasts, read magazines online, etc.

Read More

A gift of peppers

Coming back down from the mountains for the beginning of another fall semester, it was a gift to have a green and flourishing garden.  Yes, it's overgrown, the meadow is a mess (but there was a southern-bound monarch flitting around the scruffy common milkweed plants, too).  The zoysia lawn that came with the house is looking great, thanks to intermittent rains throughout the summer.  In the last two summers, we came home to parched beds and a crispy lawn, with the woodland garden parched, so it's great to have something different.

My main perennial border doesn't look too bad, but has the usual redbud seedlings that need to be cut out (this was last year's post about the same problem).

Happily, the satellite garden is ready to plant with fall greens, or almost ready, after some quick turning of beds.  I'd spent quite a bit of time on my last visit prepping soil, adding compost, weeding, etc.  Hooray!  And the main vegetable garden, ditto. 

Except for the hulking Florida Anise that has engulfed my potting bench AND access to the last block in the main vegetable garden.  I think I'll need to get in reinforcements, and they won't be my gardening companion or assistant, both of whom have other responsibilities this fall.  Tim has classes to teach, and a new book project, and Woody, well, he's got cheering up duties and is healing a sore knee.

But, it's fun to contemplate sowing seeds of hardy greens, spinach, and lettuce here, and maybe I'll try some beets, peas, and fava beans, too. Who knows?  Every season brings something new to the garden.

Finally, the gift of peppers.  A 'pizza' pepper plant in the satellite garden had 4 beautiful red peppers on it.  They're thick-walled and sweet.  Definitely a gift from a plant that had had no care all summer.

Read More

I don't love crape myrtles, but...

A crape myrtle in Ginny's back yard.

I don't love crape myrtles (Lagerstoemia indica & spp.) because they are sooo over planted in Florida. Most species are native to India and other parts of Asia, but they certainly do well here and new varieties are released each year. The Atlas of Florida Vascular Plants shows that it has escaped in a number of counties in central and northern Florida.

As a native plant enthusiast, I would not plant crape myrtles in our landscape. I would choose something native and not so commonly planted.  This way I would add to the diversity of the canopy in our yard and in our neighborhood, which is what we strive for when creating habitat and balanced ecosystems.

That being said, as a sustainable gardener, I let established plants stay as long as they are not invasive. When we bought our house in 2004, there were a few crape myrtles already in the landscape. As is the custom around here, they had been hat-racked at about seven feet high. We did a little judicious pruning to reduce the number of sprouts at the seven-foot level, and now eight years later, this crape myrtle has become a lovely, 25-foot-tall tree.

The insect-eating birds use it as a perch as they wait to pounce on bugs in the lawn, plus the hummingbirds drink the nectar. So while I would not have planted it, I think the crape myrtle enhances our backyard and its ecosytem.


Why do people think this is attractive?

These two crape myrtles at the end of a neighbor's driveway are trimmed every year. The trunks are about as large around as our trees. I don't understand why people think that this is attractive, when they could have a graceful, small tree that would not need much in the way of pruning--maybe just cutting back extra suckers.

When given an opportunity, I hope you are increasing the diversity in your landscape with some native plants that are appropriate for your region and your site, but ones that are not too common. However, if you do have a crape myrtle, give it a chance to be beautiful.

For more information see:

The Florida Extension EDIS page for crape myrtles

The Floridata.com plant profile of crape myrtles



The fact that the Arbor Day Foundation hands out crape myrtle trees as one of their membership options is irritating to me. But providing more crape myrtles is not nearly as bad as their offering golden raintrees, which is invasive in parts of Florida. But the Arbor Day Foundation's offerings is a rant for another day.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Read More

Not more queen palms!

A restaurant wins a landscape award with its queen palms, but why?

The St. Augustine Beach Tree Board and Beautification Advisory Board for landscaping awarded this restaurant with their Best Commercial category. See the article in the St Augustine Times, The Groove landscape wins honor.

The restaurant opened in May 2011 and planted their landscape with queen palms, "other varieties of palms, Buddha bamboo, oleander, alamanda and hibiscus. Liriope is used as a ground cover in some areas." Not one native plant was mentioned. If we'd had a cold winter in north Florida, those queen palms would look terrible even this late into the season.

No doubt the common name for the queen palm (Syagrus romanzoffiana) arises from the regal appearance of a healthy specimen with its long feathery fronds that droop in a graceful arch. They are readily available from big box stores and nurseries all over Florida, but why? There are definite problems with this palm in Florida's landscapes.

Here are the four big reasons why you should find another palm for your landscape:
1) Queen palms are tropical plants and are NOT cold tolerant. If the temperatures dip below 25º F, most of its fronds will die. After a cold winter, if the palm's growing stem survives, it'll look like hell for six months or longer.
2) Unlike most palms, queens are not wind resistant. In a tabulation of trees lost in the hurricanes in 2004 and 2006, queens blew over twice as much as any other palm. You know hurricanes are coming to coastal areas like St. Augustine Beach, why not plant something more likely to survive?
3) Queen palms are not drought tolerant and will require irrigation to survive our seven-moth dry season, especially during a prolonged drought period.
4) Queen palms produce a huge amount of seed, which quickly becomes a smelly mess. Plus in central and south Florida, queens palms have invaded our natural habitats and are listed on the II Florida invasives list put toether by the Florida Exotic Pest Plant Council (FLEPPC): http://www.fleppc.org/list/11list.html.

Why would you spend money to put this plant in your landscape?
And why would the St. Augustine Beach Tree Board award a landscape that is not sustainable?
See more details on queen palms in my article Queen Palms don't Rule in Florida.

Green Gardening Matters,
Ginny Stibolt

Read More